1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to business methods and their corresponding systems, and more specifically, to a multi-company business accounting system configured for operating on a computer arrangement and corresponding methods of accounting for the multi-company business.
2. Background
A multi-company business is a business that operates financially within several companies. The companies may be centralized or decentralized and geographically disbursed. In order to operate the multi-company business it is necessary to track money into and out of the consolidated group of companies.
Accountants generally enter information into modules within the accounting system. The main modules are Accounts Receivable (AR), Accounts Payable (AP), and Journals. AR and AP module data is moved to a sub system journal. The AR and AP sub system journals, and the entries made directly to the Journal module are posted to a General Ledger, described below.
Accounting systems track the flow of money within an organization. The Balance Sheet and the Income Statement are two main Financial Reports that the accounting system produces.
The Balance Sheet is a snapshot at one date for a company, or a list of companies. The equation for a Balance Sheet is as follows:Assets=Liability+Owner Equity.
The Income Statement shows profitability between a starting date and an ending date. The equation for an Income Statement is as follows:Revenue−Expenses=Income.
The Financial Reports are generated from data stored in the General Ledger (GL). The GL stores a line for each entry made to the system. Each GL line contains the GL Account, the amount of money stored as a Debit or a Credit, and a GL Date. Each GL Account defines:                Account Type—e.g., Asset, Liability, Owner Equity, Revenue, Expense;        Company Balancing Segment; and        Any number of Business Segments such as office, region, department, sales channel, and/or etc.        
An Income Statement can be generated for any combination of Account Segment selections. For example, an Income Statement can be for an office, a region, or an office for a specific list of companies.
A Balance Sheet is generated using the Company Segment. The total activity for Assets, Liabilities, and owner Equity accounts will only balance for a company as a whole. The activity will not balance for the other segments, such as an office or region. For example, a company may purchase new furniture for multiple offices. The Bank Account is reduced (credited) one time for the cost of the furniture, each office has its Furniture Asset Account increased (debited) by the value of the furniture placed in that office. Another example is that Revenue and Expenses are usually tracked by office and other Business Segments, but the company only has one Bank Account and Retained Earnings Account.
Existing systems that claim to be multi-company mean that they share the customers and vendors. More advanced existing multi-company systems share one GL for storing the information, but they only allow a user to report on either one company at a time or all of the companies in the group or system as a consolidated whole.
The existing accounting systems force the accountant to manually enter the inter-company “Due To/Due From” entries to keep each company in balance. This is a huge burden, as nearly 30% of the accounting entries are inter-company balancing entries.
The existing accounting systems do not allow a single AR Invoice or AP Voucher to have accounts using different companies on the detail lines of the Invoice or Voucher. Moreover, providing various levels of secured access to different accountants and other users of the accounting system can be problematic especially for an accounting system configured for a multi-company group. Accordingly, further improvements and enhancements are needed for accounting methods and associated systems for a multi-company business.